Hosted by: Professor Elizabeth Gardiner

Biography

Professor Ian Cockburn received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in which he discovered a new malaria resistance gene among individuals in Papua New Guinea. In 2004 he moved to Johns Hopkins University where his post-doctoral work focused on CD8+ T cells and their ability to kill malaria parasites in the liver. His contributions include the first intravital imaging of pathogen killing in vivo, which paved the way for the identification of tissue resident T cells in the liver as major mediators of protection against malaria. Professor Cockburn established his laboratory at the Australian National University in 2013 where he established a new program of research on B cell responses to malaria. Key achievements have been the biophysical analysis of antibody binding to the circumsporozoite protein, the identification of the factors that regulate memory responses to malaria vaccines, and an understanding of selection processes in the germinal center.